Animals Get Drunk Too

09/27/2011

As a Naturalist, I often get questions from friends and family about wildlife. That happened today when a friend sent me a rather interesting (and slightly anthropomorphized) video about African animals getting tipsy on overripe fruit. She wanted to know if it was true that this happened. While it seems like a joke just made up for the film that this clip is a part of, it's actually totally legit.

And it doesn't just happen in Africa either. All over the globe, especially during the fall when ripe fruits are falling off the trees and fermenting on the ground, animals overindulge and often end up drunk. Just because it's natural doesn't make it any less funny to watch.

UPDATE: Apparently I spoke to soon. Turns out that the footage from the 1974 film Animals Are Beautiful People below was staged and the animals were artificially sedated (highly unethical, by the way). Despite that there are documented cases of animals consuming too much fermented fruit and getting buzzed, including the recent incident of a moose that got stuck in a tree after eating too many fermented apples.

Thanks for pointing this out @Bill Burns. While it does seem that the behavior in this film clip was staged animals do indeed get drunk on fermenting fruit. I'll update the post though to make this point.